Some statistics—and the much bigger picture
[NOTE: I copied these graphs last night but neglected to note the site they came from. Now I can’t seem to find it, so I apologize for not offering it.]
If voting had been limited to people 30 years old and over, Mitt Romney would have won this election:
Here’s the war between the married vs. the unmarried:
Likewise, if women were not voting, Romney would have won. It’s interesting, though, that despite the huge emphasis on women this time, and Obama’s enormous effort to discuss their “issues,” his support among them didn’t increase over what it had been in 2008: “the president won among female voters by 12 points. He took 55 percent of the demographic, compared with 43 percent for Romney ”” not far off from 2008, when he won women by 13 points.”
But in some ways this one is the oddest chart of all:
Why do so many people still blame Bush for the economy? For that matter, why did so many ever blame him? The simple answer: they were told to, and most people don’t think for themselves.
Bush was president for eight years. Most of those years the economy was pretty good. It went south only the last couple of months of his administration, and he had been dealing with a Democratic Congress in the final years of his administration. So what specific policies of Bush‘s led to the crash? Wasn’t it the culmination of a decade or two of bipartisan goings-on? And didn’t Bush want to reform Fannie and Freddie in ways that might even have helped,and was blocked by Democrats such as Barney Frank?
But that story somehow never got heard by many people. What did get heard was “blame Bush,” a story on which Obama, the Democrats, and the MSM were full collaborators.
But even if that meme worked to convince people in 2008, why would it work in 2012? After all, remember that Obama himself said this:
I wonder if even at the time Obama said that he was well aware that he’d never be held accountable—that blaming Bush would become the meme that never dies, and that it would insulate him from being thrown out after only one term no matter what happened with the economy.
I am always surprised when people turn to Democrats in hard economic times. But I shouldn’t be. In hard times they want someone who cares—they want a direct bailout. So Democrats, who successfully convey the idea that they care (see this), and who offer what looks like direct and palpable assistance—government jobs, welfare, Obamaphones, etc.—are favored over Republicans, who suggest changing something else in order to create the conditions for a better economy as a whole that would then help employ more people. After all, that’s so indirect; it can be hard to connect those dots.
And there is no question that—Romney or no, Obama or no—the Democratic arguments intrinsically appeal to women, especially single women and especially single women with children, who now constitute an unprecedentedly huge chunk of the population. This is no accident; the breakdown of the family and traditional family values and structure has long been one of the goals of the left, who knew exactly and precisely what they were doing, and why. It is no surprise it has borne fruit, and the victims haven’t a clue about the process.
All of this is not rocket science. And it’s not about Mitt Romney as a candidate—who, like any other candidate, had his flaws. We look at Obama and other liberal Democrats and see huge flaws. But we are not their target audience. And to their target audience, they hit the mark, bull’s-eye.
Conservatism and its principles don’t necessarily make intuitive sense to people. They are relatively complex rather than simple, and the whole thing can sound uncaring and mean, and therefore conservative argument has to be taught. Some of that teaching also is cultural and familial. Gabe at Ace’s discusses this:
People telling themselves that we had an insufficiently conservative candidate, that having a more conservative candidate would have made a difference, are kidding themselves. We didn’t lose because of conservative or even liberal issues. We lost because of cultural issues — binders, Big Bird, birth control, and blame Bush. Those four issues would have dogged ANY Republican candidate, regardless of their conservative bonafides.
That, if you want to skip the rest of this post, is the point. Republicans didn’t lose a policy debate. They lost a PR contest. And the hardest part is that we insufficiently understood that we were even fighting on cultural grounds and not for political issues…
A regular commenter at this blog, kolnai, has offered a brilliant comment that I suggest you read in full. Here are some excerpts; the topic is why it’s harder now than it used to be to get across the conservative point of view:
Perhaps it can be put like this: in the past, “Americanism” was something that always had the potential to give a “warm glow” to a majority of people. “Personal responsibility,” “self-government,” “the Constitution,” “American exceptionalism,” and all of the conservative buzzwords and slogans had a place in the electorate’s psyche to go and resonate profoundly…
It wasn’t that Romney/Ryan ran a bad campaign or didn’t make a principled argument (as Jonah Goldberg thinks). They definitely did, even providing some nice Reaganesque phrases, such as “trickle down government,” “picking only the losers,” etc. Rather, it was that these arguments and buzz-phrases had no place to go in the minds of the un-Americanized to activate a warm fuzzy feeling.
Again, I’m repeating what I’ve said elsewhere (for which I apologize), but this point bears repetition: saying, as Goldberg and many others have, that we “failed to make a compelling argument” is comforting ”“ similar to the Democrats eternal excuse that they just need to work on their messaging ”“ but for that reason we should be wary of it. The lesson of this election is not comforting ”“ I think we all sense that ”“ so we shouldn’t run to the comforting account of it. The lesson is that conservative arguments DO NOt RESONATE anymore with a majority of the voting populace who will turn out in national elections…
The reality is that both sides here [libertarians and social conservatives] are making American arguments to un-Americanized people. For illustration, think of what it’s like making libertarian/socon arguments to a European. It’s not just that we can’t get the messaging right. It’s that it’s absolutely pointless, like smashing your head on an iron maiden.
On the flip side, though, we have also seen that when elections take on a more local complexion and the price of a vote seems higher to people, these arguments can get through to people, even in blue states. There’s nothing we can do to raise the price of a vote in a national election ”“ that depends on events and luck.
The other factor, as we’ve said, it the Gramscian complex, and this we can fight actively. This tells me that the suggestions of Occam’s Beard should be seriously considered. It is very important to have an army of surrogates deployed and ready to character-assassinate, investigate, slime, and undermine. Breitbart was a master of this. There must be more of it, and it must percolate up into the party.
Rich conservatives need to take some lessons from Rupert Mourdock. Buy out papers, magazines, news outlets ”“ use the money to create chaos in whatever Granscian institution we’re targeting. Money should become the political equivalent of a smart bomb.
There’s more, much more.
Kolnai goes on to say that there’s not much we can do about education. I disagree. There are school boards to try to influence and/or take over. There are private schools to start, and if those private schools are not especially rigid and have good track records academically, even liberals might send their kids there to get a good education (I personally know some liberals who have done just that, locally, and were astounded that their child ended up thinking more conservatively).
Conservatives have been asleep at the switch for too long. Sometimes I think that the election of Ronald Reagan and the Contract With America in the 90s were the dying gasps of a culture, rather than the encouraging revivals that conservatives mistook them for. Meanwhile, the Gramscian march continued apace.
[ADDENDUM: More from kolnai in the comments section. Well worth reading.]
Our ideas and ideals need to be part of the common language, in daily use rather than just election time (to be tune out as just politics). It needs to be a part of every day life.
I’d start with a college republican group on every campus, or at least in swing and swing able states. They should be nationally funded, with access to a list of speakers (politicians, media mavens, bloggers, and artists) willing to come for talks. Talks rather than lectures. And to do so at minimal costs, to build awareness and presence on campus.
I think this is all true and Kolnai’s comment is brilliant.
The information is out there, the Left has the advantage of indoctrination. It’s really the difference. Public schools, media, college professors. Groups who set up an information stand like College Republicans can’t compete with that.
they blame who they are told to blame…
the germans told them to blame jews, and they did, and loaded them into ovens
the communists told them to blame observant Jews and capitalists (same thing to them), and worked them to death in peace time to squeeze labor out before they go.
the americans have been told to hate white men, an bush is a white man, and romney is a white man, and the rest all are against them. (ergo holder dont prosecute attacks on them any more than stalin did, or hitler)
Solzhenitsyn on what America has lost
and at the front of the parade carrying the banners and cheering… are the feminists…
the largest single in the bag monolithic block of self proclaimed communists, still proclaiming to make a dictatorship and who just voted it in.
Graphics appear to come from CNN, Jean.
Here:
http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/president#exit-polls
The story goes: in the 1970s, an auto maker was losing money. Accountants, at a meeting, began laying out the various divisions of the auto maker which were losing money, and thus were recommended to be shut down. Finally, a grizzled management guy spoke up, with disgust: “We’re losing money everywhere. Should we shut it all down?”
The point being: you don’t shut it all down. Rather, you find what works.
Re politics
You don’t shut down truth. Rather, you find the best way to communicate it.
Use the culture? Yes!
Take back the language? Yes!
Take back the academies? Yes!
Parallel web societies? Yes!
Adjust the messaging? Fine. Do it.
All of it, and more.
But, we ought not shut down truth. And we ought not play the Dems game, b/c they rigged their game for their own advantage. We cannot win their game. We can only lose more slowly.
GWB: bless him, but, on economics, he equated to losing more slowly.
Candidate McCain equated to losing more slowly.
Candidate Romney equated to losing more slowly.
Now, I prefer to lose more slowly … as I work to change the game into a game which conservatives can win (and into a game which America can win). A problem, which I constantly encounter: fellow conservatives who perceive that the game is being won … when, in reality, the game is only being lost more slowly.
America was not winning the game when GWB was in office, and when Rove was ascendant. Rather, we were losing more slowly. If McCain had won, we would have then lost more slowly, except faster. Same with Romney. These Presidencies did not/would not have equated to winning the game. These Presidencies = losing the game, only more slowly. Why? B/c these Presidents/candidates were wired up to play the Dem game, only. They were not wired up to play a conservative game, i.e. a winning game for America and for human beings.
Therefore, if you believe that the conservative message works at the local level and fails at the national level, fine. Adjust the messaging. But, do not shut down truth. Communicate truth more effectively, but do not shut it down.
I will not play the Dems game of promoting fantasy. Three reasons:
1. the game is immoral
2. the game doesn’t work for humanity
3. conservatives cannot win the game: it is the Dems game, and it is rigged for Dems to win it.
I’ll also add that the conservative professors I had were not inclined to indoctrinate, and by that I just mean push their ideology. It’s unseemly and possibly also threatening to their own careers. Unless and until there is a much larger critical mass of conservatives in teaching/academia, that will not change. And so we just shove these people through the meatgrinder of higher ed, going into permanent debt, supporting the sinecures of these tenured academics, who teach them nothing except what to think politically.
Neo:
Why do so many people still blame Bush for the economy? For that matter, why did so many ever blame him? The simple answer: they were told to, and most people don’t think for themselves.
FDR used “blame Hoover” rather successfully in his four electoral victories. If it works, you use it. While “blame Bush” ignores at least two salient facts- 1) Bush has been out of office four years and 2) Democrat Party sponsored legislation had a lot to do with the 2008 financial collapse- if people buy into it, we can hardly blame the Democrat Party for trying to get away with it.
To put it in Kolnai’s terms:
adjusting the messaging .. might equate to creating a greater innate cost of a national vote.
In other words: the messaging ought influence voters to perceive a greater innate cost being associated with a national vote.
It could be that Dems, via focusing on social issues, have already caused Dem voters to perceive a greater innate cost to be associated with a national vote. In other words, Kolnai’s assumption might be incorrect, insofar as Dem voters perceive a great (painful) cost which is associated with a national vote Repubs.
Dem voters think: gosh, if I vote Repub then I am promoting hatred, which is costly to me. And my friends think I am promoting hatred, which is costly to me. In other words, separate from the tangible impact of a single vote on an outcome, Dems have created an impact (from a single vote) upon a voter’s self-perception, and upon the perceptions of a voter’s peers vis a vis that individual voter. Circle dance peer pressure.
“The debt/deficit is so high because Bush put two wars on the credit card.”
That was one I heard a lot. Here’s another:
“Nobody knew how bad Bush had crashed the economy, as of when Obama took over. That is why the recovery is taking so long.”
“If Romney wins, he is going to take credit for the full recovery that is going to happen after the election – even though it is due to Obama’s policies.”
If the MSM which is so deeply in the tank for the Dems and Obama in particular, keep repeating talking points over and over and over and over again, in support of a “narrative,” they become “facts.” The bad economy was a Bush economy. Actual real facts be damned.
Just read any of the 4-5 resident lib commentators on Althouse threads. Talking points straight from the pages of the NY Times and CNN are repeated as set in stone facts. And those who disagree? Well….they are just brainwashed dummies who believe what “Faux News” or Rush tells them.
Actual factual data that runs counter to the narrative, cannot be mentioned. That would risk ruining the narrative.
Why do so many people still blame Bush for the economy?
Primacy, first association.
Lincoln/civil war slaves
Roosevelt/new deal pearl harbor WW2
Stuff sticks to people no matter how many come after.
obamacare (ACA) is sticking to Obama no matter how many hands got into it
i am sorry neo, but kolnai is right..
there is nothing you can do now…
you only disagree because you didn’t read the stuff i said to read and so you would know that you cant. from Bella dodd onwards (and before too)
i will try to make it simple. are you a billionaire who can fund your own school like oprah and her rape school? or the other person that started a womans school in harlem and negated it when she found out she had to make one for men? no? thats what i thought.
so. where will you get the money for a school? the progressives? how about the disenfranchised men who lost their jobs and now women have them.
and why would women want to step back when public school is about to expand to be daycare for them?
Starting Your Own Private School in New York City
http://nycprivateschoolsblog.com/leadership-2/starting-your-own-private-school-in-new-york-city/08/10/2011/
under Obama and the left, how you going to get accredited? the rule of law is dead, you cant compel the state to act any more on your behalf.
and where you going to get accredited teachers who dont get their accredited status unless they been passed by the system as ok.
Dodd reveals that the CPUSA had 1100 members become Catholic priests in the 1930’s. It also subverted the American education system by taking over the teacher’s unions and learned societies. Only people who accepted the “materialistic, collectivist international class struggle approach” advanced.
who are you going to hire? the white guys? or the communist women? you may be a bit disconnnected as to school and such today as different than yesterday…
and if you dont know dewey, dodd, chase, iserbyt, and others, then you dont know what has been going on behind the scenes (have you read havelock yet?)
you see..
its easy to stand there and in ignorance say… lets do this… to which i say, go ahead, you might finally learn what i learned ONCE I WENT OUT AND ACTUALLY TRIED AND KEPT TRYING.
before that, i didnt know how far it went.
“The party did all it could to induce women to go into industry. Its fashion designers created special styles for them and its songwriters wrote special songs to spur them…. War-period conditions, they planned, were to become a permanent part of the future educational program. The bourgeois family as a social unit was to be made obsolete.” Dodd describing how they bribed women for power in exchange for pretty clothes and promises that will never be fulfilled.
The war years saw amazing coordination between the Communist Party and America’s financial elite. The elite financed a sophisticated propaganda agency called the Russian Institute located on Park Ave. across 68th Street from Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations. Here “famous names like Vanderbilt, Lamont, Whitney and Morgan mingled with those of Communist leaders. “(153)
did you know that?
what your now proposing on the eve of losing is something you should have started 4 years ago, if not sooner.
the wealthy and their political friends are about to become ruler of the world, and your going to stop them without any money, no control over regulation, and the richest most powerful people against you (and the majority of society on their side).
Go ahead.
if you think that starting a school in 1933 would have helped you depose Hitler and not get killed later on..
Kolnai is completely right.
the time to act was long ago, when the men couldn’t and had to rely on their mates to defend the republic from their own mates.
[edited for length by n-n]
Artfldgr: I never said I thought it would work, especially in some simple quick way. I linked to kolnai’s comment because in the main I agree with it. But the suggestions I offer are beginnings. Anyone who has other suggestions should feel free to offer them
I notice that you usually say all is lost, it’s over, it was over a long time ago, nothing to do about it (except write a book). At least, if you’ve said otherwise, I haven’t seen it (I admit that I have not read every word you’ve written, but I do at least skim the majority of them). You criticize me for offering paltry suggestions, but other than writing a book (which many people have already done, and will continue to do, and most people will not read), what are yours?
I ask this not to be snarky, but out of curiosity.
I get just a little frustrated with those who say, “Well,he didn’t appeal to group x or y”. Appeal how? Offer them more than Obama?
I frankly did not want to hear Mitt Romney declare: “I will not only give you more free contraception than Obama will; if it doesn’t work I will pay for your abortion, but I will pay you a bonus to compensate you for the incovenience.”
In the dressing room of LA Fitness Wednesday I overheard some young Latinos (their usage) talking. The guy pontificating the most said, paraphrasing from memory: “Latinos vote for Obama. I thought Romney made some real good arguments; I voted for Obama.” How do you crack that mind set? Maybe Romney could have said I will insure that all ATM and telephonic messages are in Spanish by default, and the user will have to press 1 for English. Or he could insist that all signs and public announcements are bilingual. Is that how you appeal to Latinos? We could look like Canada. Please, no.
Actually, Romney’s biggest problem was with the basic constituency. He got defined early by the meanest, most dishonest campaign in modern history. Not only did the natural opposition buy the definition, too many Pundits on the Conservative side helped to solidify it among people who should have voted for Romney, and didn’t. I heard an idiot on Rush Limbaugh today stating that he did not vote for Romney, and would never vote for anyone who used the term “cross the aisle”. Rush took him to task today, too late. For too long during the campaign Limbaugh, and other vocal Pundits, were virtually sounding the same theme. Romney did not meet their perfect template, and close was not good enough. Finally, Limbaugh, and others, starting focusing on the fact that it was going to be Romney or disaster–but the well was poisoned. I will never forgive them.
The country is terribly divided. Political charlatans prosper from divisiveness. The culture is working against us; the risque and edgy are more “entertaining” than old fashioned values. Cool trumps competence and honesty. We missed a chance to elect a healer. Another chance may not come soon enough, if ever.
Allowing 18-year-olds to vote was really nuts. It takes a lot more sense than drinking (21).
Here are some more exit poll results via Althouse via Instapundit. It’s interesting to see where there was some movement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/2012-exit-polls/
OMT, the young unmarrieds are probably those most reachable by pop culture changes and redefinitions of cool. Did you see the Gateway piece on Jesse Jackson Jr’s use of campaign money to buy a 40K Rolex for his girlfriend? Question: Did you donate your hard-earned money to this scumbag? Do you believe he cares about your student loan debt?
Oldflyer: I am in complete agreement with you.
That’s why during the primaries I tried hard to work against that divisive mindset. But it seems that conservatives always do that “perfect is the enemy of the good” sort of thing. Limbaugh is an excellent example. He played the game big time during this campaign, and only came on board late, after the damage had been done. I wonder if he sees this, and feels any regret.
Or maybe it’s all about ratings for him. I don’t pretend to know what’s inside his head; I’m really no expert on him at all.
Same for Levin. He rubs me the wrong way; seems very full of himself, and divisive, railing against “establishment Republicans.” Actually, I agree that most “establishment Republicans” don’t really have a clue what they’re up against—but most radio talk show personalities rub me the wrong way; all I hear is their own narcissism.
I do, however, admit to the guilty pleasure of liking Howie Carr, perhaps because he’s genuinely funny. I don’t know how well-known he is nationally; he’s a New Englander. Perhaps because he’s based in liberal enclave Boston, he’s got a more self-deprecating, and tragic and funny, view. He’s actually whip-smart, although his humor is very dark.
Mr. Frank: yes, it was nuts.
It was done back when there was a draft, and the argument was that if you could fight for your country you ought to be able to vote in it. Now, of course, although the draft is long gone, there’s no turning back from the stupidity of the 18-year-old vote. It would have to overturned by a constitutional amendment. Good luck with that.
And of course, once again, the left knew exactly what it was doing by pushing the youth vote (for the most part the right cooperated, by the way, not realizing what the effects would be). The left knew young people tended to be much more to the left, and could be more easily influenced. And that has borne fruit in this election.
“Rather, it was that these arguments and buzz-phrases had no place to go in the minds of the un-Americanized to activate a warm fuzzy feeling.”
And why do we find ourselves in this situation now? What caused the un-Americanization of the American psyche? At least part of the cause is the fact that these “arguments and buzz phrases” have been abused over the years by all kinds of people, both on the right and the left. A great deal of our political discourse now is just jingoistic blather (take a close look at just about any of Romney’s speeches) and people are unable to take it seriously anymore.
But you miss the most significant breakdown:
White people: Obama 39% Romney 59%
Everybody else: Obama 58-93% Romney 6-38%
Why ignore this in your post? It seems the most significant place to start if the GOP wants to construct a stratagy for building a new winning coalition.
Rob: to answer your question of what caused it, two things: the left took over education, so students no longer get the grounding to make sense of conservative ideas, and there are a lot of immigrants now who believe in big government and the welfare state and whose children (because of the afore-mentioned change in education) never become “Americanized” to other values the way they used to be.
NOVEMBER 7 is the glorious 95th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, celebrated by the masses of the world with spontaneous marching in goose-stepping columns as they share their rations of potatoes and beet vodka.
It is symbolic that on this day American workers, peasants, and the toiling unwashed intelligentsia also celebrate the re-election of their first openly socialist president, hoping he will soon abolish the capitalist oppression of gainful employment and replace it with equal rations of beets and potatoes.
We salute the entitled voting masses who stormed the polling places to bring the revolution to America. They stood on the shoulders of the martyrs of Benghazi and Bush-engineered terrorist attacks, victims of the right-wing media smear machine, as well as Luddites, Harmonites, Hippies, Black Panthers, Weather Underground, Cloward and Piven, progressive media, and all those who worked tirelessly on taking the few remaining working factories away from the greedy stockholders and giving them to the selfless Labor Unions.
This time, I’m sure, we can make it work!
[snip]
FORWARD, COMRADES!
Vorwé¤rts Genossen!
Vpered Tovarish!!!
Peoples Cube
(note how the ex soviets know harmonites, but the Americans don’t…)
kungfu: I left it out because it is so very well-known, and other blogs have talked about it a lot. I was focusing on some lesser-known, but still significant, facts.
“…. Likewise, if women were not voting, ”
Hold onto that thought.
You are in a unique position to press the question with a little personal research, aren’t you?
I’d be extremely interested to know the results. I’m still trusting that your liberals are a bit less emotion driven and more intellectually coherent than my liberals. What have you got to lose by insisting , er … asking?
I fully agree with that and with his “deAmericanization” thesis.
I also agree with those who calculate that consciously seeking to live in a community which provides more in the way of synergestic values reinforcement, and less in the way of constant drama and assaults on one’s sensibilities and life prospects, is a sound choice.
Histories written mere decades ago referred to something called a way of life.
Despite all the metaphysical and philosophical bombs going off over the battlefield, that now old fashioned term does in fact describe precisely what in substance is at issue, the penultimate ground that is being fought over. (The ultimate being the very existence of those who find a path to success through that way of life)
And the predicates of that American “way of life”, that way of living, are precisely what the left has been at war with for generations now.
Perhaps in the form of an avuncular, country clubbing, contraceptive practicing conservativism, no matter how pleasant, it simply cannot sustain itself at present – and I know of no current technological means which would afford a sure workaround – against the howling pressures generated by the wants of persons forever focused for whatever reason, on cracking your bone, and extracting the marrow.
It’s a drag to think of life as aways being on some level a war, but our ancestors always warned us it was so.
So yes, if you can, I’d also say to get with people who share your committments. It offers some footing and room for maneuver, and probably even growth.
You might even be inspired to have kids.
Of course we know that Obama is already aiming to continue the left’s age-old war on a federal system which makes such politically inspired associative choices particularly effective in the first place.
But then, what have conservatives got to lose?
gcotharn –
I think you misunderstood me (not entirely your fault, I used some words that connote lying or being dishonest).
I was the one, remember, who raised the concern the other day about not selling ourselves out by selling out the truth. I am keenly aware of the dilemma there. However, what I am suggesting, and what Occam’s Beard has suggested, is not lying or being dishonest. Someone on the thread compared it to weaponry in war – the left’s weaponry, the way they can personalize and channel larger messages through targeted attacks, is like next generation stuff. We’re still working with slingshots and bows and arrows. It is not reprehensible to upgrade your weaponry, to attack better and more effectively, and to do it in a way that actually hurts.
We mustn’t sell our souls. But we mustn’t be naive. This is war. Orating about how Democrats are just good guys who don’t understand things IS a lie. And that’s our line right now. Calling the mainstream media merely biased and then going on and getting grilled, pretending that they’re not, IS a lie. And that’s what we do now. I’m saying that in a very real sense our current playing-nice is a big lie. We’ve unilaterally disarmed and gone Gandhi, treating Democrats like they’re the tired, weak British empire who we know won’t gun us all down in a second.
But they will. They will gun us down. They are just waiting for the moment.
Let me try to put this another way. What is the media? In truth, they are the social equivalent of scum, pervasively dishonest, a propaganda operation to rival Pravda – a self-willed Soviet of mendacious, amoral blowhards who pretend to be, act as, and are accepted as being, relatively honest arbiters of TRUTH.
To undermine that, to expose them, to smash that image, requires no lying or dishonesty at all. It requires guts and a willingness to get our hands dirty, like James O’Keefe and Breitbart.
We need to stop lying about the MSM, not to start lying.
Second point: the idea of a “price” of a vote is not mine; it comes from Bryan Caplan’s “Myth of the Rational Voter.” It doesn’t refer to what voters perceive as the costs of the other guys policies. It refers specifically to the per capita cost to society of the policy/policies voted for discounted by the probability that one’s vote will flip the election. More informally, it is the material wealth you forego in order to believe.
The point is related to Bastiat’s notion of the seen and the unseen. Caplan is saying that the cost to society – NOT the perceived cost, but the real cost – of bad economic policies is unseen by the economically illiterate voter (most voters). The extremely small probability of casting a deciding vote, thus, overhwelms or does not proportionately square the true cost of the policy voted for. Thus, the perception of the infinitesimal (the meaninglessness of one vote) swamps the unperceived but very large (the costs of bad policies).
So, yes, Democrats see hell resulting from Republican policies, but that’s not the point. The point is that they are given a pass to be so stupid as to assume and believe that by the nature of an individual vote in a democratic election. The “low price” of their vote gives them license to indulge every whim or emotion they have on tap, and as I noted in my comment, those emotions are swayed and determined by the Gramscian complex.
I get what you’re saying, I just wanted to be clear that the notion of a “price” for a vote is technical. It’s meant to pinpoint why voters take their votes so lightly and use them to support wildly irrational economic policies. That comes before propaganda, which just fills the void left open by the flabby state of mind people have going into national elections.
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. … Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.
James Madison
A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
John Stuart Mill
“Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.”
Sylvia Plath, Ariel: The Restored Edition
I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Women’s Rights,’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to ‘unsex’ themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection. Queen Victoria, March, 1870
[check out the demographics. she was right, but not the way readers would imagine, so they think she was wrong…]
“Women have no sympathy… And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving you any in return for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so.” — Florence Nightingale
[they sure didn’t sympathize with their mates, their children, the outcome to society. who ever thought that freedom could be bought from women in exchange for free condoms and the protection to a false right to kill an inconvenient child]
Nearly every large college campus and many smaller ones have a Women’s Studies department. There are over five hundred women’s studies departments and over one hundred colleges that offer a degree program in women’s studies. There is not a single degree program or department in men’s studies in the U.S. It is difficult to get exact numbers, but it appears that there are fewer than a dozen classes labeled men’s studies being offered in colleges anywhere. Some that are labeled men’s studies are in fact anti-male. Kenyon College, for example, has a Men’s Studies program that in the words of one professor is in opposition to, “The white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian, middle-class norm.” (Source: “Mysterious Decline-Where Are the Men on Campus?” April 29, 2003, by Philip W. Cook and Glenn Sacks
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0429sacks.html
[that was 2003. obama now has expanded it to the point that a male i know that graduated with honors in genetics near the top of the class for the college, has decided to abandon that to see if he can get into the navy instead. after all, when the navy shrinks from 300 or so ships to less than 200, commissioned officers is what they will need more than genetic researchers (lacking tan or pudenda – the true sign of competency)]
take some time to see the interview with film maker Aaron Russo who revealed his conversations with Nick Rockefeller. for those who dont know who he is, he made the movie Trading Places…Mad As Hell… he also did amerca freedom to fascism… it stemmed from converations with the Rockefeller when they tried to recruit him. he says much the same dodd and others said..
hey… anyone want to point out which Rockerfeller is in Obama administration? David Rockefeller… with Zbigniew Brzezinski
now… did she or didnt she say it?
oh… and what about others from that period?
artists, etc?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem
Steinem spent two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow.[9] After returning to the U.S., she served as director of the secretly funded CIA-backed Independent Research Service, and worked to send non-communist American students to the 1959 World Youth Festival.[10] In 1960, she was hired by Warren Publishing as the first employee of Help! magazine.
so if you start your school, who is on your side?
I remember as a young man working on a farm in northern Wisconsin, and we were driving along when I saw an unfinished block building and when I asked about it, the farmer I worked for told me the story of how the local farmers all thought it would be great to build a community school for all their children. So someone donated land, and others materials, labor and so on, and it was great until at one of their meetings they got into a dispute over whether or not to have school prayer . . .
Too many people whining about how Leftist or Liberal so many things are, like Google, or Twitter, and so forth. So what? Where the heck is the Conservative money? In Think Tanks? Why isn’t it in rivals to Google, or Twitter, or Facebook, or any others?
Think Tanks are all well and good, but what do they produce? Nuttin’! If the Republicans/Conservatives want more bang for their bucks, they should begin investing in rivals in the Culture.
Schools are one place, newspapers, TV and radio stations, are others, and so on. If Leftists can do it in the Culture, then Rightists can, too.
No more money to the Party. Find the Culture Entrepreneurs, and invest with them. 🙂
On the blame game, British lefties blamed Thatcher for the NHS sucking for over 20 years after she left office. So don’t expect it to stop… ever.
In utter candor, I think we have to sail pretty close to the wind. Our present standard is to withhold attack until we’re pretty they’re some malefaction has taken place, a criminal law “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard. We need to go to a civil law “more likely than not,” or an even more relaxed bar “not known definitively to be false,” standard, and start with a presumption of the guilt of the accused. Make them defend themselves against allegations for which there is any shred of evidence, or any doubt whatsoever.
And, to take a swan dive into the cesspool of sophistry (alliteration alert!), we need to include use of sophisticated syntax and meretricious rhetorical practices (e.g., classic logical fallacies). An example of the former would be to frame grave allegations as questions rather than as assertions of fact, so that one can retreat behind the classic leftist “I’m just asking questions here.” Make the target deny the allegation and attempt to prove his innocence. Every denial leaves a little stink on the target. (Google “Harry Reid pederast,” which started at Ace of Spades in response to Reid’s similarly scurrilous accusation against Romney.)
As an example of the latter, begging the question: “Has Diane Sawyer’s alcoholism account for her bizarre viewpoints?” Such attacks are very difficult to refute (as we well know, having been subject to them) because to do so would require one to refute both the premise of the allegation and the allegation itself. First one would have to repeat the premise, and speak at length to it, then try to move on to the allegation.It’s almost inevitable for the ensuing argument to fasten on one prong of the allegation and to leave the other unaddressed.
So at the risk of discrediting myself here forever, I think we need not only to go after leftist figures when we’ve got the goods on them, which of course we should start doing with vigor, but also when there’s even a scintilla of doubt about their culpability. We need to throw some elbows under the basket, give ‘em a little chin music, as we say in baseball. It works, as we know from sad experience.
kolnai said:
It is very important to have an army of surrogates deployed and ready to character-assassinate, investigate, slime, and undermine. Breitbart was a master of this. There must be more of it, and it must percolate up into the party.
Remember when any Republican in the primary moved up to #1 he or she got slimed and destroyed? That’s what the Dems do. The RNC needs to fund a unit for clandestine warfare. Could no one find dirt on Obama or Biden? How hard did they try. Mossad would have found plenty. They probably already have.
Er … make that “Does Diane Sawyer’s alcoholism account for her bizarre viewpoints?”
Kolani,
Ah I get your cost point now. Econ people have a similar theory about why people vote for dumb things. They, personally, don’t have to pay much when it fails.
“americans have been told to hate white men”
Wading through the tsunami, these words stand out. There has long been a war on white males. We are the oppressors and exploiters. We are the selfish ones. Every evil and problem of the world is a conspiracy of white males to suppress women, children, and those not of the XY caucasian persuasion excluding homosexual XY caucasians.
The reality is that we are the liberators and the job creators. (Which is not meant to disparage the liberators and job creators who are not white males.) Perhaps it is time for a general strike. Conservative and libertarian white males simply stop contributing and stop consuming everything beyond the daily bread. Lets stay home for a month and watch the wheels grind to a halt.
Benning, agree. Fox tv comes before fox news.
Anyone that wants conservative media must start first with being successful media and or entertainment.
When women figure out that their husbands, brothers, and sons are men, maybe things will get better.
My bad, I forgot to add WHO IS JOHN GALT?
Neo said in the posting:
“So what specific policies of Bush‘s led to the crash? Wasn’t it the culmination of a decade or two of bipartisan goings-on? And didn’t Bush want to reform Fannie and Freddie in ways that might even have helped,and was blocked by Democrats such as Barney Frank?”
The answer is yes and yes.
Frankly (and shhhhh…don’t tell this to anyone I’m trying to convince to vote for a Republican for President), I’m of the opinion that in the short term at least, Federal Reserve Board policies have a much greater effect on the economy than anything a president can do.
It is very important to have an army of surrogates deployed and ready to character-assassinate, investigate, slime, and undermine.
Yep. We need to be ready to go nuclear on any media figure who cheap shots us. I have no problem with legitimate criticism, or those holding and legitimately expressing other viewpoints, and would not employ the methods above against them. I have a BIG problem with media cheap shot artists who pose as impartial referees, but throw rabbit punches in the clinches (Candy Crowley, I’m looking at your fat ass.)
Would any media figure cheap shot Muslims? No. QED.
Occam –
Yet again, I agree with you. I guess my standard for considering that I’m “selling my soul” is pretty low.
Maybe I’m just creating a rhetorical veneer to allow us to sleep well at night.
Soldiers often do. And that’s what we are, I guess.
Parker –
If you want to read some rather open reflections on the “war on white men” and minority racism, check out the last few comments on the thread neo linked to above. Like Occam, I feel I’ve come pretty close to discrediting myself. Or maybe not. i just think we need to start trying to be honest about things, not letting liberal pieties cloud our vision.
The reality of this situation is brutal, and we have ignored it for too long. To seriously address it we must first come to terms with how brutal the truth is, at least among ourselves. I don’t believe these reflections will ever be fit for public consumption.
Oh, and benning –
EXACTLY. Where, of where, is the money? Where are the plutocrats that supposedly define us, that our whole party is supposedly devoted to serving?
Conservatives: Economically smart with money, politically as dumb as a box of rocks.
Liberals: the opposite.
If you want to read some rather open reflections on the “war on white men” and minority racism, check out the last few comments on the thread neo linked to above.
I’m working on a friend of mine, a 25 year old black Ivy League grad who comes over to work out with me (and who, until recently, worked in Compton). He currently is “down with the people” but having starting to have doubts. In the course of our workouts we have far-ranging discussions of all kinds of things, only rarely now including sports, our initial point of intersection.
My most telling point to date: “If blacks suddenly achieved instant equality in every respect, and had no grievances whatsoever – which party would benefit, and which suffer?”
Long silence while he thought that one over …
parker: one of the things I noticed when looking at comments throughout the blogosphere, the night of the election and the day after, was the number of commenters on the left who said the equivalent of, “Ha ha white men, your days are numbered.”
the number of posters on the left who said the equivalent of, “Ha ha white men, your days are numbered.”
Reminds me of minorities who talk about waging a “race war,” apparently unclear on the denotation of the word “minority.”
Evidently they fail to realize that the people they cite as having enslaved and held them down for centuries must be pretty formidable, or that their antecedents were all sissies. It’s important not to conflate “choosing not to do” something with “being unable to do” something.
” I don’t believe these reflections will ever be fit for public consumption.”
Amongst ourselves our candidates have to stop coddling the fragile collective id of minorities, single women, and above all ‘progressives’. We have to make sound arguments based upon reality. SS & Medicare-caid, and soon Obamacare are steering the country into the fiscal abyss. Helicopter Ben is destroying our currency while simultaneously propping up the big banks and inflating the price of commodities. DC meddling in the economy (90% of the time) produces distortions and subsequently disasters. And so forth and so on.
There will no be an honest discussion, an adult discussion until conservatives start talking about the issues in a forthright manner.
“Ha ha white men, your days are numbered.”
That’s what they said in Zimbabwe, too.
Occam’s Beard: ‘Reminds me of minorities who talk about waging a “race war,” apparently unclear on the denotation of the word “minority.” ‘ – Math is HARD! LOL
Occam –
And to expand on that – that is the RIGHT way to do it. With the blacks I grew up with (I was one of those white kids you see with sagging pants, big chains, an earring, and talking like a thug – thus works the miracle of culture) – it was clear that their conception of the Democratic party was peculiarly their own. I went along with it, because I didn’t know anything else. I never really cared. It was the atmosphere, and I breathed it.
In my experience, their scorn for what they call “capitalism” is boundless (they don’t really understand what it means, they’ve just been taught to equate it with white men and slavery). Their attachment to the Democrats is not conceived in terms of economics or the things we tend to think about. It’s almost purely about power. In their view, it goes something like this:
“The Democratic party is the vessel by which we leverage our history in order to get money from white people, and even better, can intimidate them into genuflecting before us, ruining them, causing them to feel just SOME of the pain, alienation, and oppression we feel EVERY DAY.”
This is why all we get are puzzled looks and incredulity when some black conservatives go on about “the new plantation” of the Democrats. It’s a true statement. But it runs contrary to the black experience of using the Democratic party. As I noted earlier, they don’t understand economics or the way the policies they see as fleecing whites directly correlate to their immiseration. They separate the two. On one side, they’re fleecing and gaining power over whites. On the other, there is the fact of immiseration, which is blamed on white conservative capitalists.
These beliefs work in harmony. The standard line is that they must use the Democrats more and more to keep putting the squeeze on the white capitalists who are ruining their lives.
Whenever we hit on an effective message, it will involve breaking that pernicious circle of belief. It has to address, in short, the central concern of theirs: Power. And it must do it directly and clearly, not indirectly and abstractly by talking about how the free market lifts all boats.
neo –
Indeed, one of the most trending hashtags on Twitter was something like,
“#F***YouWhitey.”
(I can’t recall exactly what it was, but that was the gist of it.)
Probably most people following it and commenting were white. Just a guess.
Occam’s Beard: and in Zimbabwe they were right, weren’t they.
But the difference is that many of the people saying it this time don’t seem to be black—they are white men themselves, of the leftist persuasion (at least, that’s my impression, and that’s what some of them say they are). Proving that they are good white men, not oppressors.
Occam’s Beard: and in Zimbabwe they were right, weren’t they.
Yep.
How are things working out in Zimbabwe nowadays, anyway?
By the way, everyone –
Ace is on fire today. I’m not linking anything because it’s several posts. If you haven’t already, head over for a nightcap.
This has been another point made with my friend, namely, that teaching the true history of slavery would go a long way to healing our racial wounds. Slavery was not a crime of white vs. black, but rather a crime of white and black vs. black. Europeans didn’t make slaves of Africans, they bought them. From whom? Chieftains of coastal tribes, who made a fortune doing so. Hugh Thomas, in his book The Slave Trade, asserts that African chieftains were one of the single biggest obstacles to stamping out slavery. One such chieftain made 250,000 pounds sterling a year from the slave trade at a time when the wealthiest noble in England made 12,000 pounds sterling a year from all of his estates. There was none of that racial solidarity back then; the only solidarity was tribal. Furthermore, those enslaved were initially assorted undesirables from the tribe (e.g., criminals and political rivals) and prisoners of tribal warfare, who ordinarily would have been killed before the era of slavery. Only later did tribes conduct expeditions specifically to capture slaves.
So the true history of African slavery puts a rather different complexion (sorry) on the subject than the prevailing narrative of white vs. black. American blacks who want “reparations” from whites fail to realize that the Africans they hold in reverential esteem are likely the descendants of those who enslaved them, and made a pretty penny doing it, too, and hence they should also be coughing up.
The point is that African-Americans need to realize that there is no “going home;” they were sold out (literally) by Africans. Their home is here, not there.
There are two solutions: The one promoted here is to attempt to argue the identify victim out of his group.
The other is to began to argue to the majority victim, the white male, that to vote out of his group is immoral and against his identity.
http://www.mpaths.com/
Artfldgr made a statement recently that really resonated with me, “write a book”. The question is what kind of book and who will read it? After giving this some thought I suggest a history book to compete with, if not displace entirely, Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”. This is a hugely influential book used to teach history at the high school level written by America’s richest Communist. It’s pitched just the way you’d expect a communist, er, progressive to view history. Evil white European men, blah, blah, blah.
Restoring an honest history to American classrooms would go a long way to reversing the rot in the educational system. The fight to get something like this back into the high schools would be horrendous though with today’s educational establishment.
Paul in Boston –
It’s already been done. Larry Schweickart (sp?) wrote a big book called “A Patriot’s History of the United States” specifically to counter Zinn, and it’s a very good book.
The problem isn’t the lack of books, they’ve all been written, many of them several times over the centuries. The problem is the stranglehold the left has on the institutions that teach books, as you acknowledge at the end of your comment.
I hate to say this as a man who lives by books, but books are not going to get the job done. The one overwhelming signal of Tuesday is that electorate is, in critical numbers, FAR more childish and stupid than even us cynics were prepared to believe. Read Mark Bauerlein’s “The Dumbest Generation” and be depressed, be very depressed.
Media is the key. The books will be there when people are ready for them.
The man with the heartless shirt
Power was there, in the belly
Undigested, a small reckless.
And I lie there, wanting really
To make the street less than homeless.
More not to come, tears are token.
Levitated, for an instant.
Danced, in my eyes, the lies spoken
Awakened and flown with consent.
Flying upward, I caught the draft
Of my descent which lie below:
The shirt we wear without a heart;
The lies which mangle every soul.
kolnai, 6:29 pm
“Like Occam, I feel I’ve come pretty close to discrediting myself.”
I for one appreciate the telling it like it is, even if the race police blanch at the truth.
Good work/posts, guys (and many, many others as well).
M J R
“How are things working out in Zimbabwe nowadays, anyway?”
That is where the daily life of my grandchildren is headed unless the country changes course.
“The one overwhelming signal of Tuesday is that electorate is, in critical numbers, FAR more childish and stupid than even us cynics were prepared to believe.”
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah! 😉 Until the establishment GOP, the George Wills, and the Boehners are taken to the wood shed, the right side of the bell curve will continue to flounder and fail. The right side has to ignore the MSM and place less importance no being invited to the PC cocktail parties inside the Beltway.
The childish (and stupid) have to be schooled. Adults set the rules, adults impose limits, adults make sure the children realize they are not the center of the universe and there is no free pie falling from the DC sky.
Kolnai and Neo
I understand your point the Obama voting block do not respond to Americansim and the American dream as many of us grew up embracing – hard work, persistence, etc will take you wherever you want to go. I just don’t know if I agree that idemographics as has been suggested, or we are so much different. It seems to me the Left have been breaking up America into individual groups, all of whom have different priorities. Every election, i learn of a new group that politicans are accutely aware of.
These groups are all the various minorities, the single moms, the youth, the elderly, and a dozen others. It’s only been in the last 30 years that politicians, the media, and others began dividing us up into catagories and focusing on all our special needs and interests, what offends, and so forth. The focus has shifted from Americans to each subdivision of American, with special consideration and programs tailor made to address the needs of each voting block.
What I’m getting at in a very awkward way is these subdivisions we call ” demographics ” were created by mostly liberals. We have always been a mixture of different people, there have always been single women and married women and dumb people, and immigrants by the boatload who jabbered in different languages and cooked smelly food,and idealistic young people. So what’s different? The idea that America was a melting pot of many cultures into one was trashed when the left recognized they could define us as a collection of groups first, and Americans last. Nowadays the interests of each individual group come before the general welfare, and its almost an offense in the eyes of the media to fail to recognize women’s vaginas are their most important issue, so now they even believe it themselves.. The left divided and conquered America.
The worse part is you can’t turn on radio talk show or the TV without hearing how the republicans need to “reach out” to each of these groups. Many Americans don’t identify with Americanism because the left redefined what it is, and who Americans are. Divide and conquer is a good tactic whether you’re exerting political force or military force.
Obama has been called the most divisive president in history by his enemies, but listening to the conservative strategists, I’m not sure they understand why he does it.
reaching out implies they believe republicans can give them all the individual attention they’ve been used to getting from the democrats, who created them. I’m not buying that either.
If Herman Cain had been the nominee, I’m certain he wouldn’t many more Black votes than Romney. If Rubio had been the nominee, he probably would have done better with Hispanic votes, but not overwhelming. And I’m sure that would turn off other “blocks”.
I agree Romney had a message and I agree it was the wrong one for the masses, but I don’t think it was masses who changed, I think it was the left who succeeded in redefining Americans in their terms. Republicans are simply trying to Keep up.
I have no idea how to make us a country with common interests and common culture again. Maybe stop asking me to press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish is a good start?
And Romney was just not a guy who could connect on a personal level. Conservatives dont decide presidents that way.The party needs to understand that too. A lot of people have no good reason to vote for someone, and don’t even offer it. Republican Party needs to figure out for a lot of nitwits, the message is not as important as the man.
Richard P. Goldman aka Spengler repeatedly asserted that Christians, especially US Christians, this “almost choosen people”, need to emulate Jews to become better Christians. As a Jew, I do not dare to express any opinion if this is true or not, because I simply do not know what does it mean to be better Christian, but I know for sure that under attack from gentiles Christians need emulate Jews for much more compelling reason: If they want to survive and preserve their heritage in hostile environment, they should learn from the people who were amazingly successfull in this task for centuries. They need to cling to the Bible, to families, to other Christians, to run their own schools, communities, newspapers, teach their children to learn hard and became succesful lawyers, financiers, academics, teachers, media moguls, entertainers and celebrites. Integrate into larger society, but reject its philosophies, sins and heresies. Do not loose their identity and always help each other in any circumstances. Form a network society within gentile society and do it not in the fringes, but in upper ranks of mainstream, eventually defining what mainstream is. This is not only Gramscian strategy, this is the traditional Jewish strategy of survival and transformation of larger society to make it more friendly to Jewish values and norms. This works! Follow a good example.
The idea that America was a melting pot of many cultures into one was trashed when the left recognized they could define us as a collection of groups first, and Americans last. .
.. The left divided and conquered America.
As indicated on another thread, Bella Dodd, who was a reformed Communist, in her book School of Darkness describes the CPUSA as getting orders from the Comintern (Moscow) to abandon Earl Browder’s policy and encourage balkanization of the American populace.
I don’t buy the conspiracy theories about the Left, academia, etc. An argument is an argument and I know enough college students to know that even the left-leaning ones still appreciate the punch of a good argument. The problem is, they don’t hear many people on the Right making good arguments.
We have not done a very good job in that regard. I’m sorry to be the one to say it. The arguments are there to be made, but we haven’t made them.
If you want to persuade someone of something, you have to address their concerns. Note: I didn’t say you have to address YOUR concerns. You have to address THEIR concerns. If you’re a lefty and you want to bring me around to your way of seeing things, you should address my concerns about big government and threats to our political and economic freedoms. If you’re on the Right and you want to appeal to those on the Left, you have to address the things that THEY fear: that corporate interests will use their power to subvert democracy, that poor folks will be exploited in the name of “trickle down” economic policies, that social conservatives will use a different form of “big government–not to raid your wallet, but to dictate what type of life you lead, and so on and so on.
Alas, it’s not a lot of fun for us to address these kinds of concerns because, at least for the most part, we don’t share them. Nevertheless, if we want to win elections, if we want to persuade other people that we are right, we have to stop making our arguments ONLY TO OURSELVES. The good news is, we can do this—-if we want to. It is entirely up to us.
And the same goes for the Left of course.
Occam – thanks, I missed that but I will look it up. Seems to me we are all falling into the trap now of figuring out how to cater to the identity groups, instead of countering with our own propaganda.
Women aren’t born thinking their number one issue is abortion; they learned it from the incessant drumbeat by the left, that it’s VERY important to them. Uninformed, low information voters identify themselves with a predefined group, because it’s easy and convenient, and don’t want to be shunned by their peers in that group. They’ve been programmed before the get to the booth. There’s no other way to explain the disconnect between the candidate and their vote. When you ask a democrat voter about a specific issue –for example “do you think the goverment does too much?”, the data shows the majority will agree, it’s too intrusive and does too much and taxes them too much. Yet they pull the lever for the person who stands for those very things. That’s brainwashing. The democrats have a superb understanding of how human nature and how they identify themselves with a group. I don’t know the psychology involved, but I know it’s powerful and they have exploited it perfectly.
“Educating the public” and looking for a person who can better explain what conservatives stand for isn’t the answer. They need to be re-programmed. That requires conservative propaganda, instead of agreeing with the narratives that have been established by the Left, or explaining what “Americans” stand for. Kolnai’s point – they don’t know what the means anymore. But these identities were created for them; they didn’t form up naturally as coalitions who all started identifying themselves as single women, hispanics, old white guys, and so on.
The latest narrative is “immigration is important to all Hispanics, and republicans need to get on board”. An alternative narrative needs to be crafted, or another generation of Hispanics will believe immigration of their distant relatives is more important than their own success here. Native born Hispanics number one issue isn’t immigration, but as long as the Right accepts the premise, they are doomed.
You fight propaganda with propaganda, and engage in the same psychogical warfare they’ve been using. It’s amazing to me that so many of us all have come to believe Americans have changed instead of the truth that we’ve been re-programmed to believe we are a nation of subdivisions, each with single issues as our prime concerns. It’s a load of crap and it was planned. We didn’t devolve into this, we were re-created by a pretty clever bunch of weasels.
tsunami of words is right. this blog is my refuge. I WISH neo would get someone to set up headings for EACH post so we could SAVE LINKS to posts which give us SOLACE or DUTY or INSIGHT … or that we simply wish to re-read later (e.g., nearly every link by Kolnai or Artflngr or the sober and challenging one by Rob just above.) That way, too, each poster would have to take the time to TITLE the kernel of what is being said.
Artflngr has long been saying it’s over and he seems to gloat about knowing it first. Kolnai tells us why, without gloating. Both bring a coldness to the heart for they seem so correct. Rob – seemingly knowing this – still tells us to get to work.
In this Gramscian world it’s media media media (not book book book), but even if you were to have the media (which Artflngr points out we cannot have, so why even wonder, but …) even if you (impossibly) had it you’d still have to have, as Rob indicates, something to push.
Once you pushed it in a way that worked, then and only then you’d have “the book” – either the one yet to be written or one of the many already written and pulsing in the background, waiting to be read. And Artfldgr has the list.
As Rob says many like a good argument when they get one. The substratum for truth lingers in each individual, despite the junk food of truth to which they have become addicted. (Could Michelle work on that obesity – oh, no.)
I fooled the liberal who came over for coffee yesterday morning. I said some things about culture with which she agreed because we spoke on her ASSUMPTION that as a “cool person” of course I voted the way she voted.
We have to sneak in the truth, never attacking, never revealing. Why do we “have to” do this? Just to maintain sanity. No thought of changing the world.
It would be helpful (to me) to distinguish between what we can or must do in the marketplace of ideas from what we can do just to maintain our hearts.
Kisses are a better fate than wisdom. ~e. e. cummings
I also think it would be good to realize the cold, hard issues of the unanticipated consequences of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) to which Artfldgr calls attention – and not to throw the baby (the woman, particularly the childless woman) out with the bathwater.
Tech point: could someone also aid N-N in establishing a “subscribe to this post” click-box for Neo. One human truth is that we like feedback, and, when we post, we like to see if anyone read it and was moved to comment back.
I also think it would be good to speak to ourselves as the generation we are in: what can the 70 year old truth seeker do. What can the 60 year old truth seeker do. …. etc. down to what can the 18 year old truth seeker do. Why? Because age matters.
One option 60-somethings have is to repeat: “I’m glad I’m old.” But we don’t feel old, and we want to be soldiers, realistic soldiers who know where our drones and bayonets are and how to use them.
M of Hollywood Says:
November 9th, 2012 at 12:31 pm
Yes, I like and support that idea. E-mail notifications keep the conversation going. And it’s much easier than scrolling down to old threads where I’ve commented to see if anyone has replied.